4 noteworthy visual art shows opening this weekend

E.K. Huckaby’s “Table of the Fallen” is included in the exhibit “Art Against the Wall,” opening Friday at Gallery 72.

Radcliffe Bailey curates at Gallery 72

The City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs and the Cyclorama will present “Art Against the Wall,” a group exhibit opening Saturday at downtown Atlanta’s new Gallery 72 that will examine the consequences of the Civil War and wars in general. It’s being curated by Radcliffe Bailey, the nationally noted Atlanta artist who frequently layers images, found objects and text to explore themes of ancestry, race and memory.

The three artists in this show opening Friday — Atlantans Mike Black and Andrew Boatright and Wisconsinite Sandra Erbacher — want you to pay attention to things typically unseen. Objects like duct work, electrical conduit, water pipes and exit signs. In different ways, each artist will riff on the physicality and scale of the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center’s renovated galleries and adjacent spaces in their installations and art.

“The exhibition title is like an edict,” a Contemporary press release noted. “Be present and sensitive to the conditions that surround you.”

MOCA GA will open Ingram’s “Blue Collar Modernism,” the first in the series of three exhibitions by 2013-14 Working Artist Project fellowship winners, on Friday. The architecture-inspired Atlanta artist said the works respond to Atlanta’s long history of “constantly destroying (its built environment) to build again.”

A Virginia artist who graduated from the Atlanta College of Art, Shapiro returns to Poem 88 with a show of provocative paintings that explore, through the female form, ideas about beauty, objectification and sexual power.

”I have never believed that the characterizations of beauty and beast are mutually exclusive,” the artist has said of her work. “Instead, I examine the conflict that exists between the inner and outer lives of human experience, between a person’s placid exterior and their churning, riotous core.”

The opening reception, billed as a “‘70s style dance party,” orchestrated by the gallery and Sumptuary and including specialty drinks, will be at 7 p.m. Saturday.